The musicians:
Lee Wiggins - drums, tambourine, shaker
Bill Shaouy - piano and organ
Joe Scinta - 12-string Rickenbacker
Torbjörn Petersson - acoustic and 12-string electric guitars
Keith Klingensmith - tons o' backing vocals
...and I sang and played and bass.
An original song written through the mail with one of my all time favorite songwriters and musical artists, Martin Newell. (His 1993 masterpiece Greatest Living Englishman remains my favorite album of the 1990s.) The chords, melody, title and opening line appeared as early as 2002 but I could never come up with satisfactory lyrics despite having a very clear idea of what I wanted to say. By coincidence, I had corresponded with Martin Newell around that time and he offered to write words if I sent him the melody. He took my scribbled ideas and nearly unlistenable demo and effortlessly came up with these beautiful lyrics. They fit perfectly.
Despite thinking this was a good song, I could never come up with an arrangement I was happy with and ultimately filed it away in the back of my head, near the top of my towering heap of unfinished tunes.
11 years passed before I finally pulled it down and dusted it off. McCartney went from Love Me Do to Band On The Run in as much time. A crude acoustic guitar demo was recorded and sent off to a few long distance friends with some vague suggestions and apologies for the convoluted chord progressions. The tracks they sent back were stellar and far exceeded what I had hoped for. I'm overjoyed to finally hear it outside of my head.
PS- And what's this all about? It's about the disconnect between self perception and the views of others, being blind to your own beauty or brilliance.
A great musical example is John Lennon. One of the few voices that regularly gives me goose bumps, he apparently hated the sound of it and was always trying to cover up his perceived shortcomings by drowning it in echo or flanging, slowing it down, speeding it up or by running it through Leslie cabinets and harsh EQs. Crazy.